100+ Famous Hamlet Quotes & Copywriting Gems You Can't Miss

To be, or not to be: that is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

And enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!

How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable!

The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Man delights not me—nor woman neither.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge.

Now could I drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.

Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there.

Swear by my sword I shall not stir o’er from this place.

The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

Murder most foul, as in the best it is; but this most strange and unnatural.

O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

The spirit that I have seen may be the devil.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, as I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on.

Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

By the rood, it is the pendent air that draws men to knavery.

He took me by the palm: said ‘twenty years together,’ and let go.

O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion and the mould of form.

Into a madness wherein he says he hears voices.

That he’s mad, ’tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity; and pity ’tis ’tis true.

Nor can we call it madness when the queen herself has such a need of help.

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

Seems, madam? Nay, it is; I know not ‘seems’.

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

I must be cruel only to be kind.

This above all: to thine own self be true.

And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Speak the truth, bind it over with an oath, and leave the rest to me.

I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me!

I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome, a little ere the mightiest Julius fell, the graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Not one now to mock your own grinning?

Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust.

Dust hath closed his eyes.

No matter where—man shall but make worms meat.

Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

This mortal coil must be shuffled off.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

We defy augury: there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now.

Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love.

Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?

I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.

O, throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half.

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, and batten on this moor?

O, God! a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer.

I say we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live.

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

I loved you not.

You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it.

I was the more deceived.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

A little shalloon oil, and a wisp of straw; a great reckoning in a little room.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

The cess of majesty dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw what's near with it.

O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, is not more ugly to the thing that helps it than is my deed to my most painted word.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven.

Forgive me this my virtue.

But O, what form of prayer can serve my turn?

I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder—my crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts never to heaven go.

There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.

God’s bread! It is a knavish piece of work, but yet it is not so.

Not a whit, we defy augury.

Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?

Heaven’s face doth glow.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

The spirit that I have seen may be the devil.

I do believe you think what now you speak.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

The king is a thing—of nothing.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!

How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable!

In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!

The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

To die, to sleep—no more—and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

Conscience does make cowards of us all.

Thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.

Enterprises of great pitch and moment lose the name of action.

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.

O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

How all occasions do inform against me and spur my dull revenge!

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?

Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused.

Now, whether it be bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event—

A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward.

I do not know why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do.’

Sith I have cause and will and strength and means to do't.

Examples gross as earth exhort me: witness this army of such mass and charge led by a delicate and tender prince.

Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d makes mouths at the invisible event.

Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare.

Even for an egg-shell.